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Articles 451 - 480 of 577
Full-Text Articles in Law and Society
Physical-Strength Rationales For De Jure Exclusion Of Women From Military Combat Positions, Maia Goodell
Physical-Strength Rationales For De Jure Exclusion Of Women From Military Combat Positions, Maia Goodell
Seattle University Law Review
Women have been serving in the military in steadily increasing numbers for decades. Nevertheless, the military remains one of the few areas in which the U.S. government decides what roles are open to women based on de jure exclusions. This Article examines the law governing de jure classification, noting that a mere normative belief about women’s proper place in society is an insufficient basis to justify a sex-based exclusion. It then probes the most common rationale advanced in support of the continued de jure exclusion of women: physical strength. The Article examines four problems with the physical strength rationale: (1) …
The Cross-Dressing Case For Bathroom Equality, Jennifer Levi, Daniel Redman
The Cross-Dressing Case For Bathroom Equality, Jennifer Levi, Daniel Redman
Seattle University Law Review
While transgender rights advocates have won many battles in the fight for equality, bathroom discrimination remains a significant obstacle to transgender people’s full participation in society. This Article discusses the reasoning behind the cases that have rejected transgender people’s discrimination claims based on bathroom exclusion. The Article then demonstrates how these arguments mirror the rationales offered by supporters of long-dead, unconstitutional cross-dressing laws. Synthesizing the two bodies of case law, Levi and Redman offer a new way forward for transgender advocates seeking bathroom equality.
See No Evil? Revisiting Early Visions Of The Social Responsibility Of Business: Adolf A. Berle’S Contribution To Contemporary Conversations, Erika George
Seattle University Law Review
Much corporate legal scholarship considers such fact patterns as beyond the scope of the discipline’s core concerns. Yet, increasingly, questions are asked concerning the scale and scope of modern corporate power. This Article will challenge the conventional understanding of what the core discipline of corporate law should encompass and argues that the failure to focus on precisely these sorts of factual scenarios involving allegations of corporate complicity in human rights violations and environmental degradation is misguided and short-sighted.
Neo-Brandeisianism And The New Deal: Adolf A. Berle, Jr., William O. Douglas, And The Problem Of Corporate Finance In The 1930s, Jessica Wang
Seattle University Law Review
This essay revisits Adolf A. Berle, Jr. and The Modern Corporation and Private Property by focusing on the triangle of Berle, Louis D. Brandeis, and William O. Douglas in order to examine some of the underlying assumptions about law, economics, and the nature of modern society behind securities regulation and corporate finance in the 1930s. I explore Douglas and Berle’s academic and political relationship, the conceptual underpinnings of Brandeis, Berle, and Douglas’s critiques of modern finance, and the ways in which the two younger men—Berle and Douglas—ultimately departed from their role model, Brandeis.
Foreword: In Berle’S Footsteps, Charles R.T. O'Kelley
Foreword: In Berle’S Footsteps, Charles R.T. O'Kelley
Seattle University Law Review
On the weekend of November 6–8, 2009, scholars from around the world gathered in Seattle for a symposium—In Berle’s Footsteps—celebrating the launch of the Adolf A. Berle, Jr. Center on Corporations, Law and Society. As founding director of the Berle Center, I described our undertaking: “It is with a profound sense of obligation to the legacy that has been entrusted to my care, that I announce the launching of the Adolf A. Berle, Jr. Center on Corporations, Law and Society. It is a privilege to follow in Berle’s footsteps.”
Opening Remarks, Chancellor William B. Chandler Iii
Opening Remarks, Chancellor William B. Chandler Iii
Seattle University Law Review
Law is, in many ways, a backwards-looking field. We litigate over facts that have already occurred, challenge deals that have already been signed, and apply rules of decision based on previously-established precedent or statutes already enacted. To the extent that this Center and the symposium reflect on Berle’s work, they too are an exercise in looking back. Indeed, some might say the establishment of a Center named in Berle’s honor is a monument to the past.
Revisiting Berle And Rethinking The Corporate Structure, Kelli A. Alces
Revisiting Berle And Rethinking The Corporate Structure, Kelli A. Alces
Seattle University Law Review
Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means painted what remains a defining portrait of corporate law. The separation of ownership and control they described and the agency costs it causes are still a central concern of the law of corporate governance. For that reason, Berle’s work is relevant nearly eighty years after its publication. Seemingly forgotten, however, is that Berle’s enduring description of the corporate structure was published before most of today’s corporate law was in place. His work preceded the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and even preceded the dominance of Delaware common law in …
Power Without Property, Still: Unger, Berle, And The Derivatives Revolution, Cristie Ford, Carol Liao
Power Without Property, Still: Unger, Berle, And The Derivatives Revolution, Cristie Ford, Carol Liao
Seattle University Law Review
We are in a time when the notion of property is in flux. The derivatives revolution has shattered the “atom of property” well beyond what was originally imagined in 1932 by Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means. This disaggregation has had fascinating, and often adverse, effects on corporate law and securities regulation. Moreover, the phenomenon has had the unexpected effect of permitting some parties that already possess considerable social, economic, and political power to accumulate even more.
The New Financial Assets: Separating Ownership From Control, Tamar Frankel
The New Financial Assets: Separating Ownership From Control, Tamar Frankel
Seattle University Law Review
In The Modern Corporation and Private Property, Adolf A. Berle and Gardiner Means wrote about the separation of ownership from control in corporations. They noted that the interests of the controlling directors and managers can diverge from those of the shareholder owners of the firm. . . . There are those who consider such a decoupling beneficial. Others express the same concern that Berle and Means have expressed. And depending on what one focuses on in viewing the pluses and minuses of these separations, one could reach different conclusions. I reach a number of conclusions. First, the separation of …
Then And Now: Professor Berle And The Unpredictable Shareholder, Jennifer G. Hill
Then And Now: Professor Berle And The Unpredictable Shareholder, Jennifer G. Hill
Seattle University Law Review
Shareholders, and the relationship between shareholders and management, lay at the heart of Professor Berle’s scholarship. The goal of this Article is to compare the image of shareholders emerging from The Modern Corporation and Private Property and the Berle/Dodd debate with a range of contemporary visions of the shareholder that underpin some international regulatory responses to recent financial debacles, from Enron to the current global financial crisis. As the Article dis- cusses, these recent developments in the era of financial crises have prompted a reevaluation of the traditional image of the shareholder—and the role of the shareholder in the modern …
Berle And The Entrepreneur, Charles R.T. O'Kelley
Berle And The Entrepreneur, Charles R.T. O'Kelley
Seattle University Law Review
In the first and last four chapters (“the Five Chapters”) of The Modern Corporation and Private Property, Adolf Berle, Jr. describes in sweeping terms a fundamental transformation of the American economy. . . . Writing more than ten years before Berle, another seminal scholar, Frank Knight . . . developed a theory of the entrepreneur as part of his larger effort to more carefully explain the theoretical underpinnings of a free-market economy. . . . Given Knight’s prominence and the fact that Knight apparently reached dramatically different conclusions than did Berle concerning the consequences flowing from separation of ownership …
The Birth Of Corporate Governance, Harwell Wells
The Birth Of Corporate Governance, Harwell Wells
Seattle University Law Review
Part I of this Article briefly examines the concept of “corporate governance” and argues for dating the concept’s origins to the debates of the 1920s. Part II then moves on to examine early scholarly and popular discussions of the separation of ownership and control. After surveying the historical developments that produced the recognizably modern corporate economy around the turn of the century, it examines early scholarly and popular discussions of the separation of ownership and control, focusing on three major thinkers, Louis D. Brandeis, Walter Lippmann, and Thorstein Veblen. It argues that, while each of these authors examined the separation …
Moral Foundation Theory And The Law, Colin Prince
Moral Foundation Theory And The Law, Colin Prince
Seattle University Law Review
Moral foundation theory argues that there are five basic moral foundations: (1) harm/care, (2) fairness/reciprocity, (3) ingroup/loyalty, (4) authority/respect, and (5) purity/sanctity. These five foundations comprise the building blocks of morality, regardless of the culture. In other words, while every society constructs its own morality, it is the varying weights that each society allots to these five universal foundations that create the variety. Haidt likens moral foundation theory to an “audio equalizer,” with each culture adjusting the sliders differently. The researchers, however, were not content to simply categorize moral foundations—they have tied the foundations to political leanings. And it is …
Monitoring To Reduce Agency Costs: Examining The Behavior Of Independent And Non-Independent Boards, Anita Anand, Frank Milne, Lynnette Purda
Monitoring To Reduce Agency Costs: Examining The Behavior Of Independent And Non-Independent Boards, Anita Anand, Frank Milne, Lynnette Purda
Seattle University Law Review
Berle and Means’s analysis of the corporation—in particular, their view that those in control are not the owners of the corporation—raises questions about actions that corporations take to counter concerns regarding management’s influence. What mechanisms, if any, do corporations implement to balance the distribution of power in the corporation? To address this question, we analyze boards of directors’ propensity to voluntarily adopt recommended corporate governance practices. Because board independence is one way to enhance shareholders’ ability to monitor management, we probe whether firms with independent boards of directors (which we define as boards with either an independent chair or a …
Securities Intermediaries And The Separation Of Ownership From Control, Jill E. Fisch
Securities Intermediaries And The Separation Of Ownership From Control, Jill E. Fisch
Seattle University Law Review
The Modern Corporation & Private Property is a paradigm-shifting analysis of the modern corporation. The book is perhaps best known for the insights of Berle and Means about the separation of ownership from control and the consequences of that separation for the allocation of power within the corporation. The Berle and Means story focuses on the shareholder as the owner of the corporation. Berle and Means saw the mechanism of centralized management—in which the shareholder retains the economic interest but not the control rights associated with ownership—as threatening the conception of shareholder interests in terms of property rights. In particular, …
The Modern Corporation As Social Construction, Mark S. Mizruchi, Daniel Hirschman
The Modern Corporation As Social Construction, Mark S. Mizruchi, Daniel Hirschman
Seattle University Law Review
Classic works, Mark Mizruchi and Lisa Fein argued, share a particular fate. Authors often cite classic works without reading them—or without reading them carefully. . . . Yet perhaps no single work fits the above description better than one of the most important books on the large corporation ever published: Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means’s The Modern Corporation and Private Property. One can speculate that few works in the social sciences have been as often cited and as little read. As a consequence, we would expect The Modern Corporation to be a good candidate for either selective interpretation or …
Corporate Power In The Public Eye: Reassessing The Implications Of Berle’S Public Consensus Theory, Marc T. Moore, Antoine Rebérioux
Corporate Power In The Public Eye: Reassessing The Implications Of Berle’S Public Consensus Theory, Marc T. Moore, Antoine Rebérioux
Seattle University Law Review
We analyze Berle’s overall corporate governance project in accordance with what we see as its four core sub-themes: (A) the limitations of external market forces as a constraint on managerial decision-making power; (B) the desirability of internal (corporate) over external (market) actors in allocating corporate capital; (C) civil society and the public consensus as a continuous informal check on managerial decision-making power; and (D) shareholder democracy (as opposed to shareholder primacy or shareholder wealth maximization) as a socially instrumental institution. We seek to debunk the popular misconception that Berle’s early work was a defense of the orthodox shareholder primacy paradigm …
On (Cr)Edibility: Why Food In The United States May Never Be Safe, Denis Stearns
On (Cr)Edibility: Why Food In The United States May Never Be Safe, Denis Stearns
Faculty Articles
Most critiques of regulation are premised on the concepts of “free markets” and “market failures” as justifying, or not, the need for government interventions and control of the marketplace. Using the market for food as an example, this article questions not only the possibility of a buyer being a free actor when buying food, but also whether it is meaningful to speak in terms of a “free” market at all. One centerpiece of this questioning is the author’s coining of the term “(cr)edibility” to stand for the twinned ideas of credibility and edibility as defining the nature of all commercial …
Tracking Berle’S Footsteps: The Trail Of The Modern Corporation’S Last Chapter, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter
Tracking Berle’S Footsteps: The Trail Of The Modern Corporation’S Last Chapter, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter
Seattle University Law Review
Readers game enough to work through all three hundred pages of The Modern Corporation and Private Property looking for insights on corporate law today encounter two, apparently contradictory, lines of thought. One line, set out in Books II and III, resonates comfortably with today’s shareholder-centered corporate legal theory. Here the book teaches that even as ownership and control have separated, managers should function as trustees for the shareholders and so should exercise their wide-ranging powers for the shareholders’ benefit. The other line of thought emerges in Books I and IV, where The Modern Corporation encases this shareholder trust model in …
Rethinking The Separation Of Ownership From Management In American History, Kenneth Lipartito, Yumiko Morii
Rethinking The Separation Of Ownership From Management In American History, Kenneth Lipartito, Yumiko Morii
Seattle University Law Review
In <em>The Modern Corporation and Private Property</em>, Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means would use AT&T as a prime example of what they saw as a dangerous new trend, the replacement of ownership-based capitalism with giant corporations controlled by a small group of propertyless managers. Indeed, AT&T became Berle and Means’ favorite example. . . . As we shall see, however, the claim that AT&T was a leading example of the separation of ownership from management is incomplete. More importantly, the common interpretation of Berle and Means’ work is mistaken, placing the emphasis incorrectly on the number of shareholders and reading …
Berle’S Vision Beyond Shareholder Interests: Why Investment Bankers Should Have (Some) Personal Liability, Claire Hill, Richard Painter
Berle’S Vision Beyond Shareholder Interests: Why Investment Bankers Should Have (Some) Personal Liability, Claire Hill, Richard Painter
Seattle University Law Review
This essay, published in a symposium on the work of Adolf Berle, approaches the Berle-Dodd debate from the perspective that corporate managers have responsibilities beyond pursuing the interests of shareholders. Stock based executive compensation, designed to align managers’ interests with those of shareholders, has, in the investment banking industry in particular, failed to avert, and may have caused, managers (in this case, bankers) to take excessive risks that in the present financial crisis inflicted great damage on creditors and on society as a whole. We describe here the broad outlines of a proposal that we will discuss in future publications …
Enumerating Old Themes? Berle’S Concept Of Ownership And The Historical Development Of English Company Law In Context, Lorraine E. Talbot
Enumerating Old Themes? Berle’S Concept Of Ownership And The Historical Development Of English Company Law In Context, Lorraine E. Talbot
Seattle University Law Review
This paper offers some tentative suggestions as to why Berle’s work has been read and interpreted so selectively in the United Kingdom. I suggest that this must be partly attributable to the historical developments in English company law that entrenched the notion of shareholder ownership claims. Specifically, unincorporated associations’ normative values—that members are owners and there is no distinction between small organizations with no share dispersal and large organizations with wide share dispersal—have a continuing influence on this entrenched notion of shareholder ownership claims. First, I provide an overview of the origins of English company law. Next, I address how …
Half-Full, Half-Empty? Asian American Electoral ‘Presence’ In 2008, Robert S. Chang, Keith Aoki
Half-Full, Half-Empty? Asian American Electoral ‘Presence’ In 2008, Robert S. Chang, Keith Aoki
Faculty Articles
The article discusses the role of Asian Americans in the election of the U.S. President Barack Obama in 2008. It notes that the influence of Asian American in national politics may not significantly affect the next cycles of presidential elections in the U.S. It notes the importance of patience and optimism in envisioning and constructing Asian American electorate.
Stories Absent From The Courtroom: Responding To Domestic Violence In The Context Of Hiv And Aids, Jane Stoever
Stories Absent From The Courtroom: Responding To Domestic Violence In The Context Of Hiv And Aids, Jane Stoever
Faculty Articles
HIV/AIDS dramatically impacts domestic violence survivors' needs and demands reconceptualization of current responses to domestic violence. This article aims to illuminate the problem of domestic violence in the context of HIV/AIDS and to prompt further development of legal response systems. Specifically, this article brings together the worlds of law, public health, and women's lived experiences to argue for recognizing and responding to domestic violence in the context of HIV/AIDS in the United States. Utilizing accounts of clients' experiences and data from public health studies, this article sets forth eight categories of HIV/AIDS-related domestic violence: repercussions from partner notification, use of …
Squatters, Pirates, And Entrepreneurs: Is Informality The Solution To The Urban Housing Crisis?, Carmen Gonzalez
Squatters, Pirates, And Entrepreneurs: Is Informality The Solution To The Urban Housing Crisis?, Carmen Gonzalez
Faculty Articles
Giving the poor legal title to the lands they occupy extra-legally (informally) has been widely promoted by the World Bank and by best-selling author Hernando de Soto as a means of addressing both poverty and the scarcity of affordable housing in the urban centers of the global South. Using Bogota, Colombia, as a case study, this article interrogates de Soto's claims about the causes of informality and the benefits of formal title. The article concludes that de Soto's analysis is problematic in three distinct respects. First, de Soto exaggerates the benefits of formal title and fails to consider its risks. …
Immunity For Hire: How The Same-Actor Doctrine Sustains Discrimination In The Contemporary Workplace, Natasha Martin
Immunity For Hire: How The Same-Actor Doctrine Sustains Discrimination In The Contemporary Workplace, Natasha Martin
Faculty Articles
This article provides a doctrinal critique of an employment discrimination principle recognized by the courts-the same-actor inference-based on its incongruence with both cognitive psychological research and the social dynamics of the workplace. The same-actor principle, in its most potent form, provides that where the same decision-maker engages in an alleged adverse employment action within a short period of time of making a positive employment decision, such evidence creates a strong presumption that the decision-maker harbored no unlawful discriminatory animus. The same-actor doctrine was first recognized by the Fourth Circuit in Proud v. Stone, in which the court deemed the nature …
John Calmore’S America, Robert S. Chang, Catherine Smith
John Calmore’S America, Robert S. Chang, Catherine Smith
Faculty Articles
In their contribution to this symposium honoring Professor John Calmore, Professors Robert Chang and Catherine Smith analyze the recent school desegregation case, Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, through the lens of Professor Calmore's work. In particular, they locate this case as part of what Professor Calmore calls the Supreme Court's Racial Project. Understood as a political project that reorganizes and redistributes resources along racial lines, the Supreme Court's Racial Project creates a jurisprudence around race that solidifies the work of the new right and neoconservatives. Borrowing from Calmore's methodology, Professors Chang and Smith clarify …
Theology In Public Reason And Legal Discourse: A Case For The Preferential Option For The Poor, Russell Powell
Theology In Public Reason And Legal Discourse: A Case For The Preferential Option For The Poor, Russell Powell
Faculty Articles
There is a strange disconnect between the formal understanding of the separation of religion from government in the United States and the almost ubiquitous use of religious language in political discourse, not to mention the web of complicated religious motivations that sit on or just below the surface of policy debates. This paper presents an argument for the relevance of the principle of the "preferential option for the poor" from Catholic social thought in public reason and legal discourse in order to explore the possible advantages of making the veil between religion and the secular state more permeable. As a …
The Terrorism Exception To Asylum: Managing The Uncertainty In Status Determination, Won Kidane
The Terrorism Exception To Asylum: Managing The Uncertainty In Status Determination, Won Kidane
Faculty Articles
The Immigration and Nationality Act ("INA "), as it must, excludes a terrorist from receiving asylum. The substantive criteria, and the adjudicative procedures set forth under the INA for the identification of the undeserving terrorist inevitably exclude those who are neither terrorists nor otherwise undeserving. Such unintended consequences are perhaps unavoidable in any well-conceived statutory scheme. What is disconcerting is, however the margin of the possible error in the application of this statutory scheme. Those who may be excluded by the application of these provisions are often not those who are supposed to be excluded as terrorists. Moreover, the existing …
The Challenges Of Representing Detained Non-Citizens In Expedited Removal Proceedings From The Perspective Of The Dickinson School Of Law Immigration Clinic, Won Kidane
Faculty Articles
Persons deprived of their liberties as a result of administrative detention for immigration reasons face a multitude of serious challenges. There is currently no recognized right to the government-appointed representation in immigration proceedings. As a result, on a very small percentage of immigrants obtain pro bono or any other kind of legal representation. This problem is compounded by the fact that most immigration detainees are detained in remote rural areas where the private bar is virtually unavailable. Those who are fortunate to obtain pro bono or other types of legal representation also face some serious challenges at the different stages …